Espresso Tales - Alexander Hanchett Smith [57]
“Effie,” she said breathlessly, “Effie, you simply won’t believe what I’ve just seen, right outside my window. A wee boy panicked in the middle of Dundas Street and froze. Then he was rescued, snatched from the jaws of death by . . . Now, you won’t believe who it was, Betty, you really won’t. Jack McConnell, First Minister of Scotland. Yes! Yes! What a to-do! But he slipped away, and so I don’t think he’ll want this to get into the papers. So not a word, Effie. We don’t want it to get into the Scotsman, do we?”
36. Ramsey Dunbarton
High above the city, on the bracing slopes of the Braids, Ramsey Dunbarton stood before the window of his study, looking out over the rooftops and to the hills of Fife beyond. It was a view Ramsey Dunbarton
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that he had lived with for almost forty years and he knew it in every mood. In winter, when the light was thin, the distant hills became shapes of pale grey, hardly distinguishable from the scudding clouds above them. In summer and in autumn, the hills would stand out, sharply delineated mounds of green and purple, folds of earth that seemed, so misleadingly, to be just a short distance away. And always there was that wide, unpredictable northern sky, with its constantly changing clouds that shifted and parted with the wind.
Ramsey was a northerner by temperament. He felt ill at ease whenever he travelled south, to England or to France, feeling inside him that things were just too bright, and dusty – almost as if the sun had taken something out of the countryside and blanched it. And the air was stale in such latitudes, he thought; stale and stagnant. Ramsey liked Scottish light, pure and clean, and sharp. He liked long, cool evenings in summer and the comfortable darkness of winter days. He liked Scotland exactly as it was: unfussy, cold, and sometimes only half-visible. “I am not a Mediterranean type,” he had once remarked to his wife, Betty. And she had looked at him, and sighed. He was not. And nor, she reflected, was she.
Standing before his window, Ramsey thought of the day that lay ahead. It was ten-thirty in the morning and he had already dealt with the newspaper and the morning mail. Since there had been little news of any consequence, he had not taken long to finish the newspaper, and the mail had not been much better. There had been a rose catalogue from Aberdeen – it was his policy always to order roses from Aberdeen, as northern roses would always be the hardiest and would do well in Edinburgh. Buy north, plant south, Ramsey had often said, and the success of his roses spoke to the wisdom of this policy. It could equally apply to people, he had sometimes thought: Aberdonians did well wherever they went in the south.
Then there had been a newsletter from the secretary of the local Conservative Association in which plans for several social events had been revealed to members. The ball a few months earlier, of course, had been most enjoyable, although the 118 Ramsey Dunbarton
attendance, it was pointed out – six people – had been a little disappointing. The secretary, who had been unable to attend herself, exhorted the members to make next year’s ball an even greater success, and noted that an attempt would be made to secure the services of a different band. “We had some very critical comments about the performance of the band,” she wrote,
“and these have been forwarded to the ball committee (convened by Sasha and Raeburn Todd). One member has raised with me the question of whether it is proper for bands to allow their socialist convictions to interfere with the performance of their duties at paid functions. This is a very pertinent point and I believe that we should take action. If anybody knows of a Conservative ceilidh band, please contact us as soon as possible so that we can book them for next year. So far, no suggestions of possible bands have been received.”
Ramsey Dunbarton read this with interest. He was the member who had raised the question of the band’s performance and he was pleased to see that his complaint had been taken up. There had been a lot wrong